8°: BREASTS AND OTHER THINGS
Only a year ago, Ivan was touching the sky with a finger; he was at the peak of his career and stood taller than many other singers of his caliber. But in 1981, it seems he wanted to change the scenery, and thus, the aforementioned Breasts and Other Things was born. A significant exercise in style that cost the singer-songwriter dearly, as sales plummeted dramatically. First of all, Breasts and Other Things is an album divided in half: the first side consists of ballads in which the guitar—Ivan's main instrument—almost completely disappears, offering gems like the somber tale of Pasqua, the sardonic prayer of Ehi padre eterno, and the love story between a student and a teacher in Signorina and Cleo, a track where a Greek girl keeps the protagonist company throughout the summer only to be forced to leave by September. On the second side, however, Ivan's guitar riffs return forcefully in every possible style, touching on rock, blues, and reggae, but this time the tracks seem less interesting: there are uninspired songs like Tigre and others where the lyrics are practically used as a pretext for a stylistic exercise like Digos boogie. However, we have the amusing and absurd Oh mamma mia and Ugo l'italiano, though the lyrics are too cryptic to fully grasp the message. Breasts and Other Things is Ivan's first real outburst towards genres he had never experimented with, which he will not attempt again, or if he does (like in the 80s arrangements of Nove), he won't succeed as he did with this album.

The gem: Cleo